John Frescheville, 1st Baron Frescheville

John Frescheville, 1st Baron Frescheville (1606 – 31 March 1682) was an English courtier and cavalier.

Early life

Frescheville was the son of Sir Peter Frescheville and his first wife, Joyce. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford and at the Middle Temple in 1624. His first marriage to Bruce, daughter of Francis Nicholls, of Ampthill, Bedfordshire, had been brief and ended when his wife died childless on 10 April 1629, aged eighteen. In the following year, while he was at court, he married his second wife, Sarah (a Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria and daughter and heir of Sir John Harrington), of whom Gervase Holles remarked:

:"...from Court he married her, whence she brought him no portion but Court legacies—pride, passion, prodigality. He hath tolde me (and shee hath owned it) that she has lost him five hundred poundes in cardes in one night. But now they say she gaines by it having got the knacke of game (as gamesters call it), but others call it cheating."

Frescheville was elected a Member of Parliament for his native county of Derbyshire in 1628–9 and again in 1661–9 (during which he served on a number of parliamentary committees). He was a Deputy Lieutenant for the county in 1639–42 and again from 1660, a Justice of the Peace from 1660, and a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1639–45.

Civil war

Among the Derbyshire gentry, there was a marked reluctance to take up arms on the king's behalf at the start of the English Civil War, but when Charles I reached Nottingham in August 1642, Frescheville and his neighbour Henry Hunloke, of Wingerworth, arrived with troops of horse to support him. Having already served as a young cornet of horse in the disastrous First Bishops' War of 1639, Frescheville went on to serve under Prince Rupert of the Rhine at Powicke Bridge in 1642 and at the First Battle of Newbury in 1643, when he was slightly wounded. Thereafter, he left the royalist army to raise two regiments of horse for the king in Derbyshire. The cost of raising and maintaining troops of horse was formidable, and only the wealthiest gentry could afford it.

From 1643, Frescheville was engaged in a series of skirmishes against Roundheads in Derbyshire, under the command of Sir John Gell, Bt. His own house at Staveley was garrisoned for the king, but was attacked and taken shortly afterwards. He recaptured it and held it until 12 August 1644, when he agreed to surrender it to Major-General Crawford and retired to London. Despite some doubts as to his continuing allegiance he was, however, soon back in arms, and after the Marquess of Newcastle, the foremost royalist commander in the Midlands, had fled abroad, Frescheville was appointed Colonel General of Derbyshire on 29 August 1644. He then joined the indomitable royalist garrison at Newark, Nottinghamshire, and after troops from the garrison had retaken Welbeck Abbey, he was made governor on 16 July 1645 and entertained the king there the following month. With the royalist cause now seemingly lost, he retired to the Netherlands in November 1645.

Although Frescheville had to compound for his estate like other royalists, he was fined only a modest £287, 10 shillings and 4 pence, plus an annuity of £33 and 10 shillings payable to the minister of Holmesfield chapel. He was also excused from paying the Decimation Tax in 1655. He returned to Derbyshire some time before 1659 and began co-ordinating plans for a royalist uprising in support of Booth's rising in Cheshire. After the proclamation of Charles II as king the following spring, Frescheville was appointed Governor of York.

Later life

In 1644, by virtue of his services to the royal cause and partly as a result of his wife's nagging, Frescheville had petitioned the king for a barony. A warrant was obtained but it never passed the Great Seal of the Realm, so that after the Restoration, he petitioned for its implementation. On 16 March 1665, he was created Baron Frescheville, of Staveley, in the County of Derby, with remainder to his heirs male only. There were, however, no male heirs but only three daughters, all of whom died without surviving children. His wife, Sarah, died in June 1665, and in the following year, he married Anna Charlotte de Vic; there were no children of the marriage. By this time, Frescheville was facing financial ruin, the cumulative result of the enormous expense of raising and maintaining troops for the royalist cause (even if his composition was relatively light), generous dowries to his two elder daughters, and his wife Sarah's extravagance and gambling debts. He was therefore obliged, in 1680, to sell the reversion of his Staveley estate (by then less than convert|2000|acre|km2 in extent) for £2600 to William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, his long-standing friend and royalist supporter.

When news of this eventually reached the ears of Colonel Thomas Colepeper (1637–1708), who in 1662 had eloped with Frescheville's youngest daughter, Frances (1638–1698), he immediately entered a lawsuit to try to prevent the transfer and obtain a share of the Frescheville estate for his wife (who had been left only an annuity by her father). Despite extensive litigation, he failed, and the cost ruined him. Frescheville died in London on 31 March 1682, in his seventy-sixth year, when his peerage became extinct; he was buried at Staveley on 9 April. His tomb (erected by his widow and with his name curiously spelt 'FFrecheville') comprises a florid standing wall-monument with a marble sarcophagus surmounted by two putti, behind which is an impressive window of heraldic glass commissioned in 1676 by Frescheville himself from the York glazier Henry Gyles (1645–1709) and containing the family arms – azure a bend between six escallops argent – together with the arms of families with whom they were allied.

ource

*DNB

References

* [http://www.cfieldcommunity.co.uk/sado_staveleyhistory.htm Staveley History] - Local web site